Was Russian President Vladimir Putin ordained as a Buddhist monk "to pay respect to Rama IX," the late Thai King? No, that's not true. An image shared in a clip circulating on TikTok, portraying Putin in a yellow monk robe, has been generated using AI, as confirmed to Lead Stories by his creator.
The claim appeared in a video published on TikTok on October 13, 2024 (archived here), allegedly showing President Putin ordained as a Buddhist monk. It opened with an image of a Buddhist monk who looks like the president of Russia, accompanied by a text in Thai that reads, translated into English by Lead Stories staff:
Putin was ordained as a Buddhist monk to pay respects to King Rama IX.
It then continues with several old clips of King Rama IX performing royal duties. Several hashtags in Thai are used, among which, translated into English, #With deep respect and remembrance of the royal grace, #King Rama IX.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Dec 2 08:27:06 2024 UTC)
Lead Stories ran the image through Sightengine, an AI image detection tool. The tool indicated a 77 percent likelihood that the image had been AI-generated, as shown below.
(Source: Sightengine screenshot taken on Sat Nov 3014:00:00 2024 UTC)
According to the government-run Thai News Agency (archived here), the origin of the image can be traced to a Facebook page called 'AI Creatives Thailand' (archived here), where it was first published on March 19, 2023, by a Thai account, with the name of Tongsuke Suwannakij, as transliterated into English by Lead Stories.
Tongsuke has now deleted this collection of images from the Facebook page. Tongsuke told Lead Stories, also via Messenger, that the photos on 'AI Creatives Thailand' had been hidden by Facebook because they had been widely reposted on Thai social media and interpreted as real, leading to misunderstanding. He then removed the whole collection from the 'AI Creatives Thailand' page. "Posting it this way has gone too far," Tongsuke told Lead Stories regarding the image shown in the TikTok video.
